LGBT Christians in the UK

Nadine Dorries: The hon. Member is absolutely right, and I will come on to the workforce in a moment.
Making sure that people recognise this issue was part of the Every Mind Matters campaign. I do not know if everybody saw that, but we had the royals and celebrities such as Davina McCall promoting the Every Mind Matters campaign. We did that to reduce the stigma and to show that it was okay, because really successful people—hugely high achievers in society—have mental health issues and are concerned about mental health. Part of the project was to break down the stigma associated with mental health, which is a bit of a barrier to people accessing mental health care, and to get over that stigma to begin with.
We know that an increasing proportion of young people are seeking mental health help from the NHS, and we are responding by already ramping up capacity. We are on track to meet our commitment to improving access. By next year, 70,000 more children and young people will be accessing specialist treatment each year, compared with 2014-15. That equates to 35% of children and young people with a mental health condition, and that is starting from zero.

Nadine Dorries: One of our announcements has been to launch the trailblazer schemes, which we are hoping to have in 25% of schools by 2024. I do understand the problem in the hon. Lady’s area. I recently spoke to a headmaster at a school in Birmingham, and he told me that a third of the pupils in his school were receiving pastoral care or mental healthcare, and the reason was that a third of his children came from chaotic homes where either one or both parents were addicted to gambling, drugs or alcohol. As a consequence of having a third of the school roll in this situation, the school had serious problems with the children in the school.
So in some areas the challenges are very difficult. The hon. Lady said that we cannot just throw money at this, but the money has to fund the services—that is where it has to start, and then the workforce have to come.
The trailblazer schemes are doing incredibly well. I went to see one in Hounslow recently. We have committed to having 50,000 more nurses and are trying to train more mental health nurses, and we are having great success in getting people through universities and through the right courses and into schools. The school I visited in Hounslow, where the mental health workers were working for the children, was incredible to see. I spoke to a large group of the children who are receiving mental health support during the day, and they told me that they are being taught coping strategies. One young boy, whose name I will not mention, said to me that he suffers from anxiety—he gets anxious—and they have put an app on his phone so he has his time to be anxious and panic. His app time is at six o’clock, and he will go on to his phone and use his app.
There are so many aspects to the care being provided in school. There is early intervention, spotting mental health problems as they begin very early on. They could spot eating disorders almost as soon as they were arising in young girls. There are also issues such as anxiety and depression, and others that may not wholly be mental health-related but where the presentation of the problem was a mental health issue.
We are hoping to have 25% of schools across the UK covered by 2024, but, as I said, the bath was empty, so when we turn the tap it cannot fill straight away. The work has started. The people are being trained; they are being rolled out in schools right now, as we speak. I can say that early intervention, having seen it at work myself, is working. That was reassuring, because 18 months ago there were none of those teams in schools; there was no early intervention in any school anywhere. So the fact that we are watching these teams roll out into schools is incredibly reassuring.
On eating disorders—I will work my way through my speech, just to make sure I cover every aspect—more young people are getting the treatment they need. There has been a significant improvement in treating times in NHS care. An extra £30 million is being invested every year into children’s eating disorder services and there are 70 new or expanded community-based teams covering the whole country. Nationally, we are on track to meet the target of 95% of children and young people with an eating disorder accessing treatment, with a one-week referral for urgent cases and four weeks for routine cases.
I went to an eating disorder unit a week last Friday and met some of the young women there. It was fantastic to see the work being done. Once the young women go in, they have to stay in for quite some time. I am not sure that many people realise that an eating disorder is  the deadliest mental health condition. One in four young women die from their eating disorder. It is the only mental health condition where the person suffering from it is scared of getting better. It therefore presents an incredible challenge to the mental health professionals who are working with those young girls. I saw the new eating disorder unit up and running, the work it was doing to turn the young women around and the investment that has gone in. The unit is managing to turn those young women around in a shorter time; it is just fantastic to see.
While recognising that we are still filling the bath and that there is more to do, what I really want to do is celebrate—I do not think that the hon. Lady will blame me for doing so—the good work being done by NHS professionals, including doctors, mental health nurses and those coming out of universities, to work on our trailblazer schemes in schools with young people. I want to celebrate their achievements. I am also very pleased that, after years of under-investment, NHS funding for children and young people’s mental health service is now rising and will continue to rise as we work towards the goals set out in the long-term plan. Funding for mental health services will grow faster overall in the NHS budget, in real terms worth at least £2.3 billion. The funding for children will grow faster than the funding for mental health care, which will grow faster than the overall NHS budget. This transformative investment will mean that by 2023-24 an extra—this is an important figure—345,000 children and young people from nought to 25 will receive mental health support every year.
Of course, some children will unfortunately experience a mental health crisis and will need rapid mental health support. I, like others across the House, am pleased with the strong focus on crisis care in the NHS long-term plan, which sets out investment of about £250 million in crisis care. I am not sure who mentioned A&E and hospitals; maybe it was the hon. Lady. We now have, in almost all A&Es across the country—I think it is 97%—a mental health liaison worker. When somebody—a child or an adult—presents at A&E with a mental health condition, they are now seen by an A&E mental health liaison officer.
I am aware, however, that there is also a need to provide more support in the community, and to encourage early intervention and prevention. In fact, most of the £2.3 billion that has been allocated to mental health is for community services. Tim Kendall, NHS England’s national clinical director for mental health, says that no mental health service is ever better provided in a hospital than it can be provided in a community, except for the most serious cases. That is why we are delivering a new school and college-based service to help children and young people, staffed by a new workforce, through our children and young people’s Green Paper on mental health. It is about encouraging partnership working between services, and bringing together health and education to provide early intervention mental health support for children.

Nadine Dorries: As I explained, we have the trailblazer schemes—we are putting fully qualified, dedicated mental health workers into schools. I imagine that some of the schools in the hon. Member’s constituency will be beneficiaries of that, so the responsibility will not be with the teachers; it will be with the mental health workers. I absolutely take her point: teachers have a huge amount to do. I will check with my officers which schools in the Birmingham area have trailblazer schemes and whether they are due to go in to help her. She described her area as having 500 young people waiting, so I am sure that it is very much on the list. I will also check with Claire Murdoch at NHS England, which is responsible for delivery. It is quite interesting that whenever I say to constituents in my surgery, “The Government provide the money and the policy but NHS England is responsible for delivery,” they say to me, “Who are NHS England? I don’t know who they are. You are the Government.” However, it is responsible for delivery so I will check with Claire Murdoch what is happening in the hon. Member’s area and where the trailblazer schemes are going.
Mental health support teams will be rolled out to a fifth of schools. I am sure that the hon. Member will be pleased to know that the new schools-based service is in addition to existing provision for children and young people with mental health needs. It is in addition to the additional funding that has been given to the care commissioning groups. I will also touch base with her commissioning group. One of my concerns has been that the money that is ring-fenced for children and young people’s mental health is perhaps not always being spent on what it should be spent on, so I will touch base with it. That would also give us a better picture of what the care commissioning group is dealing with. These new plans will significantly increase the availability of mental health support to children and young people and build on existing provision.
On the workforce, to deliver and spend the money, most of which will go on salaries, we need the people to spend it on to deliver the mental healthcare. We are not  complacent about the scale of the workforce challenges associated with achieving the very ambitious plans for mental health services, and making transformation a reality will require significant shifts and innovation in the way in which we deliver our services.
We have seen promising results from NHS Improvement’s work to improve retention among mental health trusts. I spoke to a group of students recently who were considering healthcare as a future career; they were considering midwifery. We need more midwives. We have a lovely, glamourised image of the role of midwives from the television, from “Call the Midwife” and “One Born Every Minute”. People who are considering going into NHS caring professions are looking at the more glamourised areas of care, and I am struggling to persuade people that mental health is a fantastic, rewarding career. We want more mental health nurses. In fact, two weeks ago, I announced that the grant for those who want to work in mental health nursing will be £8,000—they will get the upper tier. They will also get assistance with childcare costs. So I ask people who are considering nursing overall as a career please to consider mental health nursing. I know how difficult it is. When I was training to be a nurse, we were offered 12-week placements in maternity or psychiatry, and my entire cohort chose maternity, so I know the challenge that I am up against. We need to increase the workforce, but we need to attract more people to that area.
Social media was mentioned earlier. In that regard, the NHS holds only part of the answer. We must do more across Government to protect the mental health of our children, and that includes protecting young people against harmful online content. We now know more about the impact of social media platforms on the health and wellbeing of our young people, and the need to manage the detrimental impacts. The scale of the challenge that we face in protecting children online is vast. That is why the chief medical officer commissioned an independent review of the evidence, and gave advice about setting boundaries for children and young people online. The Government’s “Online Harms” White Paper sets out a range of legislative and non-legislative measures detailing how we will tackle online harms, and also sets clear expectations for tech companies to keep children safe.
My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) mentioned online harms earlier, and he was absolutely right. We face many challenges in our modern society, such as poverty—which was mentioned—as well as online social media and addictions, and many of those challenges filter down and have an impact on young children.
I am extremely proud of what has been achieved so far in relation to children’s and young people’s mental health. As I said earlier, we have achieved more than any previous Government, including those of my own party. We are increasing funding massively, and we are introducing a whole new service through mental health support teams so that more children and young people   than ever before—345,000—will be able to access mental health support. We have made huge progress on putting mental health on the same footing as physical health.